Did you know that you can distribute your eBooks to OverDrive with one click, right in your Kobo Writing Life dashboard? Reaching millions of library readers—and receiving the best royalty rate you’ll find anywhere—is as easy as opting your eBooks in and setting a Library price.

OverDrive is Kobo’s sister company, meaning we are working together to offer you the exact royalty rate (50% of your library list price) you would get if you had a direct OverDrive account, but without the added hassle of managing two separate accounts, AND without any additional aggregator royalty cut.

So what do you need to know?

You have the option to opt-in eBooks to OD’s library system on a title-by-title basis (At the moment, authors must request to have OverDrive activated on their account—email us right now if you would like to opt in! We’ll have this option automatically available to all English-language users within the next few months)

You will be able to set a unique USD library price for each title, and OverDrive will match the territories for distribution with the territories you’ve chosen for each eBook

Most library eBooks are priced at around what you would charge for a mass-market paperback, or between 1.5-2x above your eBook list price

You will be paid 50% of the USD library price for every sale to an OverDrive-enabled library—the highest rate you will find anywhere

In this early phase of the KWL/OverDrive relationship, there will not be any online KWL Dashboard reporting. Reporting will all be done via the monthly sales spreadsheets that you receive from vsr@kobo.com

Payment will be added to the regular KWL payments to KWL accounts with the same (45 days later) approach as retail sales

KWL User View

Users with OverDrive Distribution will see the opportunity to opt their titles in via the Rights and Distribution tab in Kobo.

By default, when you go to that screen, this is what you will see….

The Terms of Service appears (when you click on that link) in a pop up box

Once the author clicks on the OPT-IN for OverDrive, the USD library price field opens up.

Here is the help text you will see when you click into that field. (A notice that your price must be at least $0.99)

Once you have entered a price, this is what your view will look like.

OverDrive Libraries

A listing of locations for OD empowered libraries and schools appears here.

Once your eBook is live on OverDrive, spread the words to your fans so they can request your eBook at their local library. OverDrive also launched a great free app, Libby, where users can browse eBooks right on their devices.

As you can see, the process is incredibly simple and a fantastic way to get your book out to a new market—and help you increase your earnings!

If you’d like to enable OverDrive distribution on your account, send an email to the KWL team now and we’ll get you set up.